Not really. But dedicated Long Beach City Council watchers should notice that item No. 19 under Departmental Communications on tonight’s Council agenda (it’s also denoted by the No. 08-0092) has been taken off the agenda.

Apparently, it wasn’t put on the agenda long enough before the meeting; that’s what a staff member in Third District Councilman Gary DeLong’s office told me this morning.

What is this item, and why does it matter? It is–or was–about those six electronic billboards which the city has been considering putting up all over town, a discussion that’s already more than a year old.

This time, the item was added to the agenda by Third District Councilman Gary DeLong, most likely because DeLong heads the Budget Oversight Committee which last considered it. None of the proposed billboards would be in DeLong’s district.

The item asked the Council to agree with the Committee “to consider the use of Digital Billboards with the following caveats …”.  Those caveats are about money, of course (but more in a minute).

The six billboards would be planted in assorted Long Beach neighborhoods–but they’re designed to be seen by freeway drivers, who apparently don’t have enough on their minds.

Their six locations are: at the San Diego Freeway and Redondo Avenue; at the San Diego Freeway and Temple Avenue; at the San Diego Freeway and and Long Beach Boulevard; at the San Diego Freeway and Hughes Way (near Santa Fe Avenue); at the Artesia Freeway and Paramount Boulevard; and at the Long Beach Freeway and Long Beach Boulevard.

And the caveats–or sticking points, if you will–are how much money the city will get, and what will become of that money.

Under the current plan, the city and the billboard company would split the proceeds each year–after the billboard company recouped its expenses–netting the city an estimated $1.5 million per year, or $250,000 per billboard.

But what if expenses ran so high that there were no proceeds to divide? The Council tonight would have discussed setting a minimum net revenue–thereby guaranteeing the city a certain yearly income from those billboards. Not a bad idea.

The other part of it, of course, is what would happen to that money once it arrived in the city’s General Fund. The Council also was to have discussed plans to share that money with “the Arts and Public Safety.”

In the case of “the Arts,” Long Beach Museum of Art officials told me last year that plans were to use some of that billboard money to help the museum pay back a $3 million construction bond guaranteed by the city, and floated to build the museum a new gallery.

Now we’ll never hear that discussion–at least not before April. Tonight is the last Council meeting of the month. The next meeting date? April 1. (Insert joke of your choice here.)

Tags: California, electronic billboards, Long Beach, Long Beach City Council, long beach museum of art, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Third District Councilman Gary DeLong